With a sharp rise in Covid-19 deaths, cremation grounds have been running non-stop on Bengaluru’s outskirts.
At a long-unused cremation ground in Tavarekere, one can only see pyres burning. People working here have no time to waste since ambulances keep coming one after the other.
Meanwhile, inside Bengaluru, seven Covid crematoriums have been running almost round the clock for the past three weeks. One of them was shut down for maintenance on Saturday.
At the Tavarekere cremation ground, there are 41 iron platforms on which pyres can be lit in two shifts -- morning and evening. Each pyre takes around five hours to burn the body completely. So, close to 85 bodies are cremated in a day.
In the last 15 days, more than 800 bodies have been cremated here and the numbers are only increasing.